Casualties Drop 50%.

The government on Oct. 1 said civilian casualties fell more than 50% in September, during which US casualties dropped to their lowest level in 14 months. A tally provided by the health, interior and defence ministries noted 884 civilians killed in September, down from 1,773 in August, 1,653 in July and 1,227 in June.

All estimates of civilian casualties are contentious, however, due to the difficulty of obtaining complete data from conflict zones scattered across the country as well as the danger that statistics are politically manipulated. But September's drop is one of the most dramatic since the government began releasing figures, and is in rough accordance with other data suggesting levels of violence may be dropping. The apparent decline also comes in spite of September's partial overlap with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which usually sees an increase in Neo-Salafi attacks.

The independent Iraq Body Count, which tallies press reports of civilian deaths, recorded higher numbers but showed a similar trajectory - 1,280 killed in September, 2,575 in August, 2,600 in July, and 2,092 in June. US casualties also declined.

Icasualties.org, a website keeping a tally of US deaths, reported 63 fatalities in September, compared with 84 in August and 126 in May. September's total is the lowest since July 2006. The US military on Sept. 30 said attacks in this year's Ramadan had dropped 38% from last year, which he credited to the "surge" of 30,000 US troops into Iraq and a new strategy of deploying units in smaller forward bases in populated areas.

The number of deadly blasts targeting civilians appears to have dropped in the past two months, although one attack in August in a remote area of north-west Iraq proved to be the deadliest on record, with 441 reported killed. Some US military officials have credited tribal coalitions allied with the US military against al-Qaeda for reducing violence in some areas, as well as radical Shi'ite mullah Muqtada al-Sadr's call to his Jaysh al-Mahdi (JaM) militia to suspend attacks.

US fatalities in the western province of Anbar, where the reaction against al-Qaeda has been strongest, fell to nine in September, compared with 13 in August and 18 in July. Baghdad has seen a reduction in fatalities, with 30 US troops killed in September compared with 38 in August and 45 in July.

In a statement released on Oct. 1, Ambassador Crocker and Gen. Petraeus commended Iraq's security forces and its citizens for the decrease in violence, saying: "We are confident that you and your fellow citizens will continue to display determination, that Iraqi Security Forces will remain vigilant and that additional Iraqis will join our combined effort". On Sept. 30, the US military said, US and Iraqi forces killed more than 60 Neo-Salafi insurgents and Shi'ite militiamen in intense battles.